Re: [Planner] Resource dependencies

[Sheldon Simms <wsxyz6294 yahoo com>]

--- Brian Christensen <brian SimpleProjectManagement com> wrote:
> Sheldon,
> 
> > I'm trying out Planner for the first time today. It seems to work very 
> > well so far, but I have a
> > question. Is there any way for Planner 0.11 to implement dependencies 
> > between tasks based on
> > (work) resource availability, or do I just have to manually create 
> > task dependencies?
> >
> > Just in case I'm not sufficiently clear, I have a situation where one 
> > "startup" task is a
> > predecessor of about 8 different tasks that are logically parallel. 
> > However, all of the tasks are
> > assigned the same resource at 100% and Planner seems to be perfectly 
> > happy scheduling all of the
> > tasks simultaneously, although the resource can't actually work at 
> > 800% to do all of them in
> > parallel.
> 
> This question goes back to the definition of what a dependency is. Most 
> of the books say that a task A is dependent on a task B if task B can't 
> start until task A is finished. However, even though the tasks are 
> logically parallel, if the same person is going to do both tasks, that 
> person will almost always have a preference in the order they are done. 
> It is convenient to treat the tasks "as if" they were dependent and to 
> define dependencies between them.
> 
> It is better to define a "treat them as if" dependency than to let the 
> tool define a random order for the tasks. This shows up most clearly 
> when you are taking status from the team. Say your team member has been 
> assigned tasks A, B, and C. that are logically parallel and so can be 
> done in any order.  Let's assume that the tasks will each take a week 
> to complete. You let the computer assign an arbitrary order to the 
> tasks and it comes up with C then B then A. What does your status look 
> like if the person decides to complete task A first? You would have to 
> report that task C is late and task A is early. You would also have to 
> explain to your management and to your customer why it is not a problem 
> to have a late task. Why create problems for yourself that can be 
> avoided?
... some snippage...

I don't really see how this relates to my question, which was about
resource overcommitment. Perhaps most readers of this list are thinking
about software development projects and expect to a resource to be
capable of being 100% committed to multiple tasks at once. I was thinking
of other situations where resources can not be overcommitted. For example,
if the resource is a piece of equipment. Can it be in my office 100% of
time and in your office 100% of the time? You and I might have logically
parallel tasks, but if both of our tasks require the equipment resource,
they cannot procede in parallel (with 100% resource allocation), no matter
what our manager might wish.

I accept that resource overcommitment should be allowed by the program,
but I would like to be able to make resources non-overcommitable. If I
have a non-overcommitable resource assigned to several logically parallel
tasks, then the program might give me a choice: A) order the tasks prefer-
entially, or B) allow the tasks to procede in parallel by dividing (equally
or not) the resource commitment among the tasks, or C) some combination of
A and B.

> P.S. Sheldon, would it be okay with you if I quote your question on my 
> web page?

Sure, no problem


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